Squat Box

How can we design a hands-free way for strength coaches and physical therapists to monitor performance during exercises?

As the Director of the Projects-to-Products initiative at the Yale CEID, I spearheaded the design, production, testing, and first manufacturing run in China of the Squat Box, an exercise tool aimed at addressing challenges faced by strength coaches and physical therapists. Originally developed by a team of first-year engineering undergraduates, the Squat Box recorded exercise depth and provided feedback. However, it had reliability issues and lacked attention to user experience. Taking the lead, I revamped the enclosure design, electronic architecture, and code optimization.

The electronics were simplified and integrated onto a custom PCB that I designed with Kicad, housed within a more compact and ergonomic ABS plastic enclosure designed with Onshape. The design was tailored for eventual injection molding while utilizing 3D printing in the prototyping phase. To assess its viability as a product, I oversaw the in-house production of 50 redesigned Squat Boxes for beta testing by university strength coaches, personal trainers, and physical therapists.

Based on feedback from this round of beta testing, completed in early 2021, I les the team in market research and supply chain optimization with our manufacturing partner in China to further refine the Squat Box design.